An easy-to-build electronic spintop for young engineers

Author

Ramagnano, Nicola ; Mathis, Heinz

Author_Institution

Inst. for Commun. Syst., Univ. of Appl. Sci. of Eastern Switzerland, Rapperswil, Switzerland

fYear

2014

fDate

11-12 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

240

Lastpage

244

Abstract

A spintop with a LED text displayed during the spinning process is an attractive toy that can be built in an afternoon by youngsters in order to attract offspring for engineering. Except for the LEDs the only other semiconductor part needed is a TI MSP430 on the spinning PCB. The rotation is detected or rather estimated using a discrete inductance coil measuring the magnetic field of the Earth. The software on the microcontroller contains a PLL to stabilize the multiplexing of the LED line text. Different modes such as plain text, compass indicating W-N-E-S, and competition mode with a score of the achieved revolutions kept in memory make the gadget a device in high demand.

Keywords

compasses; electronic engineering education; light emitting diodes; microcontrollers; phase locked loops; printed circuits; LED line text; PLL; discrete inductance coil; electronic spintop; microcontroller; phase locked loops; spinning PCB; young engineers; Coils; Compass; Earth; Light emitting diodes; Phase locked loops; Software; Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Education and Research Conference (EDERC), 2014 6th European Embedded Design in

Conference_Location

Milano

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-6841-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EDERC.2014.6924396

Filename

6924396